Young And Beautiful
by orintheus
Summary: movie!Great Gatsby AU. Noel/Hope. Will you still love me when I'm no longer young and beautiful? Will you still love me when I got nothing but my aching soul?
1. Chapter 1

The house is as elegant and empty as he is, he thinks. But he doesn't write it down because he's scared, scared that someone will read it and think the worst in Estheim. He wants to make it very clear to the therapist: he doesn't hate Estheim, not at all. Quite the opposite actually. The therapist just gives Noel this unreadable look as he pores through page after page of his madness. He avoids the madhouse, just by a tiny sliver of sanity. They discharge him, and though he's resolved never to come back to that haunted place once filled with parties, he's found himself there. Unlocking the door to his house and side-eyeing Estheim's empty lot. The garden's becoming a mess of weeds and dead grass, the pool undrained and red.

He has never been an alcoholic but the grief has made him one. It has also made him a chronic sleeper and a man filled with self-loathing. He continues on with this wreck less behaviour, as if that stint with the therapist meant nothing. People all have their crosses to bare, his is loving a man who has passed, Estheim's was trying to recreate a time that no longer existed. They are both fools to that end.

The first day he arrives back at his house, he drinks himself to sleep. It doesn't take much, just a cheap bottle of whisky he finishes off. The taste is bitter in his mouth, he doesn't care. The second day, he's up at the crack of dawn nursing a hangover from last night. He's all bleary eyed and shaky, when it subsides he takes out his type writer and begins to write. But the words are uninspired and tired so he throws it out in the trash. He spends the rest of the day pacing back and forth, ignoring the large mansion looming in the distance.

The third day, he tries to approach Estheim's empty estate, he makes it up to the gates then he turns back. He's panting by the time he gets back home, it's not from the running either. That night, he locks all the doors and goes to bed with one light on.

The fourth day, he's smoking and pacing back and forth, back and forth. Like the waves lapping on the shore, washing away whatever's left. He turns to the window of his house where he can get a good view of Estheim's mansion. There are no more lights, no more people coming and going as they please. The people have escaped, wanting nothing to do with Estheim but the memories. Somewhere the memories are still there. Somewhere someone is talking about that party Estheim threw. Somewhere someone is reminiscing meeting Estheim for the first time. Thinking about how beautiful he looked when the fireworks hit and how he'd left them in awe.

(Somewhere in Academia that someone isn't him thinking about the past.)

Tonight he goes to sleep with all the lights off, he is plagued by dreams of him as punishment. His body floating in the water, then fresh-faced in an open casket, not a soul in the world except him.

The fifth day, he decides enough is enough. He pushes aside his fears and enters Estheim's house. The place is haunting, scarred. The whole house is empty and broken. Estheim's pool is still filled with water, his blood mixing in with the chlorine. He stoops down and lets his hand graze the surface of it. Once this pool had water and confetti and bodies dancing in it. Once the red stain in the pool was in Estheim's veins.

(Once Noel cared and believed in things too.)

He stands there for the rest of the day, lost in his thoughts, lost in a haze of what ifs and maybes. Lost in a longing for somebody that can't be brought back. The end of the dock shines green in sympathy.

So we beat on and on and on. Until we're left with nothing but the green light and broken hearts.


	2. Chapter 2

_(Did this in a couple of hours_. _Tried to imitate Fitzgerald's style. Takes place long before the first chapter.)_

When I first moved to Academia, the city was at its height and I was pulled in by its promise of glamour and easy money. I was twenty-four, had dropped every notion of becoming a writer to trade stocks and had one cousin that lived on the other side of the lake where the smell of old money was by far the strongest. I had heard rumours of Estheim from the people I'd bought the cottage from.

Apparently, they had been to his parties but had never met the man himself. As I stared down the lake, I had the most peculiar sense that someone was watching me from the tiny crack of open curtain fluttering in the house next door. Though I had no real evidence of this, nor did I have any inclinations toward investigating it further. I let that feeling slide away as I went back into my house to prepare dinner.

Back then the routine was always the same for me: I'd get up, go to work then I would be at my house brushing up on the encyclopedias I had bought with me until it was time to go to bed. This particular day, I was disturbed early in the morning by one of Estheim's servants. He wore a regal blue suit, his car parked delicately in the clearing was a hard black colour. He handed me an envelope on a silver platter and just as suddenly as he had come, he had left.

My name was marked on the envelope in cursive writing. In it Estheim said he'd be having a small get-together later on and that he'd delighted if I came. I did, out of curiosity. It was quite a spectacle for me, people flooded the house and I swam in with them. The music was loud and intoxicating, I remembered quite suddenly my mother's words of being pulled in by the underside of the city. The corrupt and sinful and yet here it all was on display. There were people dancing everywhere in such gaiety I'd wondered if they'd become intoxicated by the free-flowing alcohol or simply the party itself. The people spilled themselves out into Estheim's backyard, having had enough of the cramped rooms inside. I was more than relieved by the change.

The night air was refreshing. The noise and people, at first were a nuisance but their spirits were addictive and soon (after a few drinks) I found myself enjoying the night.

"Kreiss! Is that you?"

I turned at the sound of my name and quickly spotted Serah in the crowd. She was wearing this strange gothic print of a dress all the rage with people her age, a drink in her hand to compliment it.

"I-uh I was invited."

I pulled out the now crumpled invitation and showed it to her. She grabbed it and tossed it aside carelessly.

"People aren't invited here silly! They just come in, you know." She winked conspiratorially to me as if it were a secret to everyone but us. "Like moths to a flame except you don't get burned unless you've drank too much."

She pulled me to one of the tables where we could get a good view of the party and pool bellow. We ended up sharing it with a silver-haired man looking in his mid-twenties and a girl on top of his lap. They were giggling to each other, whispering and getting on. There came a lull in the show, which happened every so often at parties where there was simply silence and then the festivities would continue on despite the lapse. The man turned to me and smiled.

"You look awfully familiar," he said, conversationally. The girl in his lap had become bored and slipped off to god knows where. "Were you…maybe in the Academy during the war?"

"For a little while at least, I was on Team Beta."

"Team Alpha. I knew I'd seen you somewhere before."

We began talking about some unfinished project on the Yaschas Massif that had probably long been completed since we had left. But to us (at the time) seemed to drag.

"Strange party," I said, carelessly. "I've been here for the whole night and haven't seen heads or tails of the host. You know, Estheim."

The man looked on as if not quite comprehending. "I'm Estheim," he said, incredulously.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I do beg your pardon."

"It's no problem, old sport."

Estheim smiled again but it was much more of a smile. A rare genuine one that made anyone who saw it feel safe, one that saw through a man but only acknowledged the parts that he himself wanted to showcase, to be perceived as if he'd thought they were extremely exceptional in that sense. The moment lasted for a second, and then he was whisked away by one of his butlers.

"Admit it, you thought Estheim was a stuffy old man didn't you?" Serah teased.

She leaned into me, her breath smelling of alcohol, making me feel uncomfortable by the distance and demeanor she was displaying. So different from the dinner party version of herself I'd seen at my cousin's.

"Did he really kill a man?"

"Who knows? One time he told me he went to Eden University. I didn't believe him."

"Why not?" I asked.

"I dunno I just don't think he went there."

She stirred her drink absently, her tone reminded me of all the rumours I'd heard just before the party. At the time that was all Estheim was to me: rumours. Some fantastical piece of storytelling people whispered about and never quite understood. A myth to everyone who came to his parties. I remember having this insatiable urge to know more about him, seeing him was just the tip of a foreign and almost exotic iceberg. After all cool men like Estheim don't freely come into existence out of nowhere only to buy a house on the edges of Academia of all places.

I ended up staying in the wee hours of the morning, indulging far too much than I'd care to admit. By then the party had ended, the people who stayed were depressed and hung over. A woman, lying down on a piano had begun singing an old church dirge. I slipped away from the lethargy and into the sunlight. My journey with Estheim had only just begun and here I thought this was the end.


End file.
